Each community looks at the snow mess a little differently, Buffalo University District Councilmember Rasheed Wyatt has to look at school kids dealing with unshoveled sidewalks from bad landlords. Wyatt says it was good that school was closed on Monday.
“(The schools in my district, where they are, they were plowed and they were cleaned out. I don't believe the grounds were taken care of at this point, from what I saw. But, as far as we have kids still walking. I know we have a bunch of kids who walk up Orleans to their school. They would have not have been able to do that safely. They would have been in the street and that's something that we don't want.”
West Seneca Supervisor Gary Dickson was getting town operations somewhat back to normal, with an essential service starting back up.
“Trash pickup is going on today. We actually tried to do trash pickup on Friday but after an hour or two, it was clear that was not going to work in the middle of the storm. That had to be postponed. We are definitely back in business and Town Hall is open and it's sunny outside.”
That’s even with snow fighting issues because of machinery destroyed in a December fire. New equipment is on order and will arrive eventually. Other towns, like Clarence, have been helping out.
In hard-hit Orchard Park, Supervisor Gene Majchrzak says the first goal is to get streets open.
“The main objective, especially during the driving ban was to make sure First Responders, fire company, anybody that needed to get to someone to help or so on. That was the first objective and now the cleanup and restoring things to normal has started and how long that's going to take really don't have a handle on it just yet.”
Of course, everyone knows there are costs involved, whether it’s the worker overtime or the wear and tear on equipment or just the community image across the country, of a region deep in snow.
